In a new interview with Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Edwards says it’s “complicated” when asked about the state of her marriage to John Edwards, a former presidential aspirant whose affair with Rielle Hunter torpedoed his career.
“Neither one of us is out the door,” said Elizabeth, who has terminal breast cancer. “So I guess it’s day by day, maybe it’s month by month.”
Elizabeth Edwards – who spoke to Winfrey from her family’s home in Chapel Hill, N.C. – says they’re “still living together.” But asked if she still loves her husband, she replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”
Denise Richards can sympathize with such complicatedness, though the federal investigation into John’s suspect payments to Rielle take it a step further.
Days after declaring his second run for president in 2006, John confessed that he had an affair. The National Enquirer broke the story about a year later.
Looking back on their marriage, Elizabeth tells Winfrey she asked John Edwards for just one gift before her wedding 31 years ago: “I wanted him to be faithful to me. It was enormously important to me.” That’s gotta hurt.
He long denied it publicly, but John Edwards confessed to the affair in an August 2008 interview after getting busted visiting Rielle Hunter and their alleged love child. He still denies paternity of her daughter, Frances Quinn.
Asked about the baby issue, Elizabeth says, “I’ve seen a picture of the baby. I have no idea. It doesn’t look like my children, but I don’t have any idea.”
As for how John met Rielle Hunter, Elizabeth offers this:
“What John said was that this woman spotted him in the hotel in which he was staying. He was meeting someone in the restaurant bar area, and [Hunter] verified with someone who he worked with that it was John,” she recalled.
“John went to dinner at a nearby restaurant and when he walked back to the hotel, she was standing in front of the hotel. She said to him, ‘You are so hot.'”
Choosing not to address Rielle Hunter by name, Elizabeth continued, “This person is very different from me, and really very different from him. So, this was a pretty big leap for him. Maybe it’s being so different is what was attractive.”
Asked about her mortality, Elizabeth says it’s not “frightening,” but she prays for an “ever-after. I would be leaving part of my family, but I can do [that] and join another party and wait for that day when we’re all together again.”
“In some ways, it’s something you yearn for.”
IT’S COMPLICATED: John Edwards’ marriage to Elizabeth is certainly murky after his boning of Rielle Hunter. His political future is quite clear, however – there is none.